Four months of preparations for three days of pleasure

Four months of preparations by the Organization Committee preceded the three day long World Futnet Championships. The tournament with 20 representations from 3 continents was held between 7th and 9th December 2012 in the Central-Bohemian Nymburk.

World Futnet Championships was firstly held under the auspices of the recently established UNIF federation, whose establishment was initiated for example by Czech republic, Slovakia or France. Apart from these traditionally futnet competing countries, another not so well-known in the futnet world and more exotic countries were participating: for the very first time the representations of South Korea, Costa Rica and Basque Country were present. The Sportcenter of Nymburk was full of futnet players, altogether we had 138 of them.

The largest expedition – probably a bit unexpectedly – could be bragged about by the only Asian representation: South Korea. A team of 14 representing players arrived to Nymburk to represent their country, followed by the second biggest Czech team with only one player less than the team South Korea. In contrast with the biggest teams, team England had only one single member. Surprisingly, it was the team South Korea that got an incredibly warm welcome from the basketball city of Nymburk: during the Championships they became loved by fans thanks to their acrobatic interventions, dances and loud cries.

Referees were an important part of the Championships. They were gathered and came to Czech republic from all over the world: including 14 referees from the hosting country and 9 more from abroad joining the team. Equally significant role was played also by more than hundred members of the organizing team.

The sport event of world importance brought a lot of attention from the Czech media: all the finals were broadcasted live on the Czech television, various agencies´, newspapers´ ,magazines´and internet portals´ photographers were present at the court; naming just a few like the Czech press agency or the newspaper Deník. Also thanks to the media propagation, the atmosphere in the Sportcenter was incredible during the whole tournament: the play-off matches were sold-out to the last seat and so there were around 1700 fans cheering in the hall.

There were the „three flashes“ above the Nymburk´s Sportcenter: Slovak team dominated all the competitions with unexpected ease – winning the single competition (finals aganist team Hungary), as well as the doubles and the triples competition (both finals aganist Czech republic) – and the hall was therefore three times filled with the thundery „Nad Tatrou sa blýska“ (of the Slovak national anthem).The remaining medals were distributed between the teams Czech republic and Hungary. While the hosting country gained two silver medals and one bronze medal, the Hungarian representation was celebrating the exact opposite collection of medals with one silver and two bronze medals.